Creamy Buffalo Chicken Pasta Recipe
This Buffalo Chicken Pasta is creamy, spicy, and super cheesy! It makes for an incredibly delicious dinner made ultra easy with the use of leftover shredded chicken, rotisserie chicken, or a quick batch of Instant Pot shredded chicken.
Servings: 5 Servings
Ingredients
- 2 cups (6 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese
- 2 cups (6 ounces) shredded Monterey jack cheese
- 1 cup Frank's RedHot Original, or other hot sauce of choice
- 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- 8 ounces dried penne pasta
- 3 cups cooked and shredded chicken, (about 1.25 pounds of fresh chicken, cooked and shredded)
- 14 ounces canned diced tomatoes, drained
- 1 tablespoon dried dill
- Green onion, sliced, for garnish, optional
- Gorgonzola cheese crumbles, for garnish, optional
Instructions
- Add the shredded cheese, hot sauce, cream cheese, granulated garlic, salt, and pepper to a skillet over medium heat.
- Whisk the cheesy sauce together until it's smooth. At the same time, in a different pot, cook the pasta noodles according to package instructions.
- Once the sauce is smooth, add the shredded chicken, diced tomatoes, and dried dill to the skillet and stir to combine.
- Stir the pasta into the skillet and let everything continue to cook until warmed through. Garnish with green onions and gorgonzola cheese, then serve and enjoy!
Notes
- Add bacon - adding cooked and crumbled bacon would be absolutely delicious here!
- Dairy-free - this is a very cheesy recipe, but thankfully, there are tons of dairy-free options at most grocery stores! To make this recipe dairy-free, you'll need to swap the shredded cheddar and Monterey jack cheeses for a dairy-free shredded cheese, swap the cream cheese for dairy-free version (Kite Hill makes a delicious one), and either leave off the gorgonzola cheese or find a dairy-free alternative for that too. The gorgonzola will likely be the trickiest to find, so you may have to search a little bit (think: local specialty markets) for that one!
- Grain-free - Jovial Foods makes a delicious cassava-based grain-free pasta that you can swap for conventional pasta to make this recipe grain-free.
- Gluten-free - simply swap conventional pasta for a gluten-free version (Barilla's gluten-free pasta is what we typically use).
- Nut-free - this recipe is nut-free as is!
- Egg-free - same as above - this recipe is egg-free without any modifications.